Shadow in the North

Chapter Fifty-Six - Moving on

Mrs Thornton returned from Hayleigh – after having been bid by Fanny, to stay for some four weeks – to find Isabel sat at the dining table (Johnny sleeping in his basinet, beside her), as she pored over scraps of fur and battled with parcels of cotton fluff.

'What is all this?' asked Mrs Thornton, her eyes wide with dismay. In truth, she had surmised – with one cursory glance about the room – that the standards she demanded, had quite slipped in her absence from the mill house.

'Oh, Mother,' said Isabel, looking up with a smile. 'It is lovely to have you home. I trust Fanny and Irene get on well?' Mrs Thornton shuddered – as she always did – at the sound of her granddaughter's name, and merely nodded, before frowning at the monstrosity in Isabel's hand.

'What is that you have there?' Now she spied brown thread and a needle, and she became quite worried that her daughter-in-law had seen fit to fashion for Johnny, a new wardrobe in her absence.

'I am making a bear for Johnny; a little plaything for him,' frowned Isabel, indignantly. 'Cannot you see that it is a bear?' And she held it aloft, so that Mrs Thornton could take a closer look. The matriarch pressed her lips into a firm line, and her nostrils flared, as she leant towards the strange creation. She secretly thought – upon closer inspection – that the bear held an even weaker resemblance to any such stuffed creature, than it had when she was stood at a distance, for her vision was now all the more sharp, and only heightened Isabel's ill work.

'You ought to have made something you could find a pattern for,' said Mrs Thornton.

'Oh, but I drew my own. Stuffed bears are very popular where I have lived.' Mrs Thornton did not reply, but looked to the badly stitched, lumpy plaything, and supposed that if such concoctions were admired where Isabel had lived, she must have lived in some very queer places, indeed. She was saved from the responsibility of any further comment, by the arrival of her son. He strode quickly into the dining room and pressed a kiss to his mother's cheek.

'Welcome home, Mother. I just saw you return, and thought I would join you for tea.'

'Yes, do, John. I must nurse Johnny.' And so Isabel took the babe up to her rooms, leaving mother and son in solitude, for the first time in more than one month!

'How does Isabel get on?' asked Mrs Thornton, sitting wearily at the table.

'Better than you, I should think, Mother. You look a little tired.' She pursed her lips, and sighed deeply.

'Fanny is trying, and her babe cries loudly and often.' Mr Thornton smiled, broadly.

'Then you shall be pleased to be home. Johnny has cried little, and Isabel is much improved, as you can see from this bear she means to make for him,' said he, inclining his head towards the discarded work pieces which now cluttered the dining table.

'It is ghastly, John.' And now, he chuckled wryly to himself and nodded.

'It is, Mother, but Isabel has spent many hours working on it, and so I find I cannot help but admire it.'

'You are soft, John. We can only hope that Fanny does not see it.'

'And how is Fanny? Watson tells me she quite dotes upon little Irene, and is forever fussing with her dress.'

'It is true. She is a warm mother, but you know your sister. She is flighty, and now that the babe is come and a girl! Well, she has seen new papers added to the nursery (which was newly made up when she found she was with child!), – something more feminine, she said – and she talks of little but the dresses and ribbons she shall have for her babe. Then she quite tires herself, and so has Irene sent to the nursery with the maid, and complains that she is loath to be separated from her daughter.'